"Robert Reed - X-Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

I nodded and then consciously ignored his advice. My little Hyundai had a
piece of gold paper tucked under one wiper. “First Annual Hill-Hell Run,” it read.
Unfolding it, I found the disclaimer and had a good laugh. Then I noticed the prize
money, and my first thought was that my slow-witted buddy was an exceptionally
bad proofreader.

“Oh, no,” he told me. “The amounts are correct.”

We were standing among the other finishers, watching the Sassafras Awards
being handed out. Smacking the entry form with a fingertip, I asked, “Do you mean
this? Two hundred dollars cash for an age-group winner?”

He shrugged. “I want runners at my starting line.”

“Oh, you’re going to have them,” I said. “And two thousand dollars for
winning the whole show?”

He flashed a big smile my way. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, but
something was lurking in those eyes—a sharpness revealed for a half-instant—and
then his expression instantly turned back to beach-boy simple.

“Two grand?” I repeated. “With prize money to tenth place?”

Shrugging, Kip pointed out, “There won’t be any double awards, so the
wealth’s going to be shared.”

In other words, the top ten finishers, male and female, would be yanked from
age-group consideration. Of course two hundred dollars wouldn’t make any
difference in my life. But the idea of winning that tidy sum for being the fastest
fifty-something ... well, it was a delicious promise. I was still grinning when the
Sassafras race director called out Kip’s name. Once again, he had won our
age-group, and for his achievement, Kip earned the privilege of walking up front to
receive a coin-sized medal dangling on the end of a cheap ribbon, plus a gift
certificate for fifteen dollars off his next pair of running shoes.

What made the moment memorable was the audience: A sudden silence
descended, followed by a few quiet whispers. Then the applause came, but it wasn’t
the light, polite applause that follows pleasantly contrived moments like these. What I
heard was hard clapping accompanied by shouts, one of the young stallions
throwing his arms high in the air, calling out, “Kipper! Kip, my man! My buddy! Kip,
Kipper!”

****

My hip improved, and I started building my mileage again. But old bodies
don’t relish sudden change or too much ambition. I sputtered in early September,
and then managed a brief recovery. But my comeback collapsed during the fifth mile
of the Classic 15K. My hip was screaming, and for the first time in thirty years, I
gave up, accepting a humiliating ride back to the finish line. The next morning, I saw